The Cubs power their way through a pivotal game against the Cardinals.

Game Three of the NLDS between the Cardinals and the Cubs shifted to Wrigley Field on Monday night, with the advantage tilting to the Cubs not only because they split the first two games of the series in St. Louis but because their ace was taking the hill. While Michael Wacha certainly isn’t any kind of slouch, it would be difficult to argue that the Cubs didn’t have a significant edge with the white hot Jake Arrieta on the mound.

The Cardinals righty has struggled of late, but does that mean it's time to buy or sell?

It’s only the third installment of The Buyer’s Guide on Baseball Prospectus—you can find the previous two right here and here—so I still feel obligated to introduce the column and to elaborate on what we’re doing in this space each Monday.

The overall goal is always to better understand an individual player’s trends and to make our best educated guess for future performance. With that said, I also strive to center the discussion around fantasy value. We’ll place a buy, sell, or hold label on the individual player each week, but readers should more importantly leave with a few concrete trends or performance changes upon which to focus and to ultimately make the buy-or-sell decision on their own. I’m simply offering my best recommendation.

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You might want to let someone else draft or buy these pitchers in your leagues this spring.

There are so many pitchers to choose from. It's not that hard to not choose one of the following.

Clay Buchholz, Red Sox
I’ve never been shy about my feelings for Buchholz and of course he burned me to a crisp last year with a 1.74 ERA and 1.02 WHIP. I’ve never been a fan and I think the reasons are sound:

The defending National League champs are replete with fantasy assets on both sides of the ball.

At the risk of pummeling home an obvious point, teams that advance to the World Series typically provide plenty of fantasy value across the board. The St. Louis Cardinals were no exception in 2013. Fifteen players provided double-digit Roto value in NL-only last year. Carlos Beltran left to join the New York Yankees, but with Matt Adams and Allen Craig already in the fold, Oscar Taveras waiting in the wings, and a handful of shrewd acquisitions, the Cards won’t miss a beat in 2014, and will once again be a good place for most of your fantasy shopping needs.

The Cardinals try to force a Game Seven while the Red Sox attempt to seal the deal.

One would think that it’s very difficult for a team to go on the road and win the final two games of the World Series with their backs up against the wall, as the Cardinals are facing right now. However, history tells us otherwise. If you make an assumption that most World Series teams are somewhat evenly matched, you’d expect a specific team to win two games in a row around 25 percent of the time. Throw in the heightened atmosphere and lack of home field advantage, and you might expect that number to go down, but it turns out it’s exactly 25 percent. In World Series history, there have been 24 teams facing a 3-2 deficit as they went on the road for Game Six. That road team has prevailed six times. Can the Cardinals make it seven? They’ll turn to their rookie sensation to get them there.

Frontline fantasy pitchers come and go, so Bret looks at the hurlers who seem poised to make the leap next year.

Conventional fantasy wisdom has always suggested that pitching is more volatile from year-to-year than hitting. In this case, conventional wisdom is absolutely correct—and the 2013 season bore this out even more than usual. When you look at the top ten fantasy starters in both 2013 and 2012, one thing becomes very apparent: there’s a ton of turnover. In fact, there was only one pitcher (Clayton Kershaw) who made both lists. For further effect, here they are side-by-side:

The Tuesday Takeaway
Game one of two between the Indians and White Sox was a seesaw affair.

Cleveland got on the board first in the bottom of the second on an RBI single by Michael Brantley. The visitors tied it on a fourth-inning sacrifice fly by Avisail Garcia and grabbed a one-run lead of their own on a run-scoring knock by Alejandro De Aza. Moments later, Brantley countered with a solo shot that knotted the score again, and Jason Kipnis drove in a go-ahead tally with a single. And so the game went into the ninth inning with the Progressive Field scoreboard reading Indians 3, White Sox 2.

When the Cardinals selected Michael Wacha 19th overall in last year’s draft, the right-hander was widely regarded as a polished arm who could potentially zoom to the major leagues. While that has proven to be true––Wacha reached St. Louis less than a year after he was drafted––he’s showing to be more than just a “safe” pick.

The Texas A&M product put himself in the big-league discussion this spring by yielding one unearned run in 11.2 innings out of the bullpen, walking one and striking out 15 while flashing 95-98 mph velocity. The impressive performance yielded an aggressive assignment to Triple-A Memphis out of camp.